Gideon railed on the program from the campaign trail but did NOTHING to help Mainers during COVID
Gideon’s attacks on the PPP were so caustic that the Washington Post rated them “Mostly False”... while her husband’s law firm benefited from the funding
Members of the press,
In a misleading television ad that the Washington Post’s non-partisan Fact Checker rated “mostly false,” Sara Gideon criticized Senator Susan Collins work on the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) - falsely claiming it was only helping one in ten Maine small businesses.
In fact, for weeks - Gideon has criticized the PPP over and over again.
But - she NEVER came clean to voters about how this program, which is intended to help small employers retain workers during a pandemic, actually helped her own family! The law firm where Gideon’s husband works received more than $1 million in taxpayer funds from the program!
In fact, Gideon released a policy document demanding more transparency about who got the funds -- a week AFTER her husband received his money -- but she’s never disclosed that her family benefited from the program.
A review of program recipients, released by the Small Business Administration yesterday, shows that the PPP program has been a major success, pumping billions of dollars into Maine, helping thousands of businesses across the state, at a time when Maine needs it the most.
By contrast, Speaker Sara Gideon has spent the last 111 days campaigning, refusing to bring the Legislature back in to address a myriad of state-level issues, including a collapsing unemployment system and more than $1 billion in federally-allocated relief funds that have sat unspent in Augusta since March.
Instead, Gideon and her allies relentlessly attacked the PPP program and criticized Senator Collins for her work during the pandemic to help Mainers.
Think about it - while Gideon lied about the PPP program, she was actually living off it.
While she did nothing to pitch in during Maine’s dark hour, her family was supported by a program Senator Collins created.
Gideon has a long record of hypocrisy and falsehoods, but this takes the cake.